Ever After
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: Jushiro sits down for a painful talk with Ichigo. It's all over now and Jushiro is so sorry it had to end like this.


Ichigo doesn't even have to look up from the hole he's burning in the far wall with a vicious glare to know who is approaching. There are people everywhere, just not in plain sight. He'll hand it to those Second Squad goons. They've got the stealth thing down.

But the inner compliment is tempered by bitterness. He shouldn't even be in a position to marvel at how well they hide themselves. He should be back home in Karakura, putting up the sword and robes—if only for a while—so he can do some much-needed catching up on things like family, friends, and normalcy. It's stupid for him to be sitting around in Soul Society under constant watch from a pack of highly trained assassins.

Oh, sure, he could take them. The problem is what happens once he's taken them down. He has fought Captains to standstills, but he doubts that he could hold off a pack of them. Maybe that's why they sent tall, sick, and pasty over.

"I thought I would find you here."

Ichigo snorts. What a lame way to get the conversation rolling. But it's better than this, he admits. Better than being treated as one part pariah, one part criminal

"Where else would I be?"

"It's a fairly large estate," the Captain returns evenly.

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

He's trying hard, so hard, to make this as painless as it has to be. He's usually quite good at that, reputed as the most sociable and outgoing of all the officers in the Thirteen Squads. But standing next to this boy, who has given so much and hurt so deeply for so little in return, he feels stupid and maladroit, his tongue three sizes too big for his mouth.

But he barrels ahead, doing what he must. Such is the life of a Captain, grappling with things they would rather never face but must be faced if only for the reason that no one else will.

"Have you given it any thought?"

The air grows heavy with barely restrained hostility. Jushiro Ukitake knows it is an impersonal hatred, a malice toward a system and a logic, rather than himself. He instinctively braces against a coming blow all the same.

"Like I have a choice," the boy's voice surprises him in that it oozes exhaustion more than anger. "You guys will just do whatever you want, no matter what we have to say about it."

That's true, Ukitake admits to himself. He's surprised it took this long for things to come to a head. He hadn't really expected the old man to take him up on his suggestion that the boy be made a substitute Soul Reaper, loosely affiliated and scandalously unsupervised. It simply wasn't the way things were done in Soul Society. There was no room for personal feelings and individual considerations. There were only ever cogs in the machine.

He keeps this to himself. (He notes, with no small amount of self-loathing, that it's a disturbingly common trend in his day-to-day dealings with people.)

"Your contributions to the war effort won't easily be forgotten. I'm sure the Commander-General would be willing to entertain any alternatives you and your friends would put forward."

Ichigo looks at him for the first time. His eyes drill into the Captain's in a way that says 'yeah, right, you lying douche bag.'

It's not the kind of progress Ukitake had been hoping for.

Ichigo looks away again, his eyes boring into a spot on a high wall that contains and protects the gardens of Captain Ukitake's gardens. Somewhere, deep down, he realizes he shouldn't be acting like such an ass. Of all the Captains, this one was among the truly decent ones, who cared for his subordinates like they were his own and put his neck on the line more than once for the rebellious human and his friends. He's among the few allies Ichigo has ever really had in Soul Society. He let their little rag tag band stay at his place, for God's sake.

But as long as the waning Captain carries that rank and wears that uniform, Ichigo will never be able to call him a friend. So he goes on stewing and dumping his scalding attitude on Ukitake.

"Do it." The words just barely escape his mouth, drawn tight as it is.

Long, delicate lashes flutter in surprise. He hadn't seen that one coming.

"Come again?" He doesn't mean to patronize. Really, he doesn't. He simply has to be sure he's getting this right. It's not the sort of thing that can be undone.

"Just get it over with." Ichigo's eyes, once blazing with stale fury, have now gone glossy with hurt, regret, sadness, and a hundred other emotions so acute that it would be enough to overwhelm some of Soul Society's most hardened warriors. All this and not yet twenty, Ukitake muses sadly. "I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I thought I could help people, but no one wants to let me help. Whenever people said 'no good deed goes unpunished,' I told 'em they were full of crap. It doesn't matter how hard it is. It's doing the right thing that counts."

Ukitake knows better than to interrupt this. It's a dam breaking, a storm raging. If he stops this, he'll hurt the boy worse than he's ever hurt anyone, even on that night he was so stupid and foolish as to let his own Lieutenant fight that brutal battle alone. He closes his eyes and lets the waves of a broken boy's grief wash over him. He is audient to a savior betrayed. It's the least he can do.

"I honestly used to believe that. Really, I did. Do the right thing, no matter what." He sinks inward, shoulders collapsing and chest shrinking to make himself concave. It's a far cry from the invader who stormed the Court of Pure Souls on little more than spirit and spitfire less than a year ago. "Way to go. You fucking win. I give up. Wipe my mind so I don't ever have to deal with you bastards ever again."

Ukitake takes a moment to collect himself and steady his breathing. He knows better than to apologize, even if that was his gut reaction. There's nothing he can say that will make this better. He can only cause at little pain as possible.

"Thank you for all that you've done, Ichigo," he begins, knowing that he's about to indulge in a sanctimonious, pretentious thing that's more for himself than the boy. It's a panacea for a guilty conscience. "I can honestly say that lives were saved thanks to you. Don't ever forget that. You've paid a high price, but what would the alternative have been? Spiritual poverty? Personal damnation? No, you did the right thing, and I'm happy to say I had the chance to meet you before this happened."

"Yeah," Ichigo croaks. He's barely aware that I've even said anything, Ukitake surmises. That boy is a million miles away, adrift in a sea of could-have-beens and what-ifs. It's the kind of thing men drown in. Maybe it really is for the best…

And Ukitake hates himself all over again. He truly is Yamamoto's son, in spirit if nothing else. Here he is, delivering his overblown speeches, justifying the terrible, and feeling wonderful for it.

It's a domino effect, one that has crushed him a million times before. He thinks, now, of how terrible he is in this moment. He thinks of all that made this possible, all the missteps and excuses and past mistakes that came together to create Captain Jushiro Ukitake. He thinks of men who died under his command, people who went to ruin on his own flawed advice and, most recently—

"_Wake up," she sobs desperately, trying to cajole the other Arrancar out of his inevitable death._

"_Shut up," he groans suddenly, chest shifting painfully, breath wheezing out in a half-gasp. "How am I supposed to get any sleep with you making all that noise?"_

_Her brother is dying._

_There's no resemblance between them, nothing to hint they were anything more than strangers until recently. But it's in the way he tries to comfort her, the way everyone can tell she'll never be right again after this. Yes, he is big brother, for better or for worse._

"_You're always sleeping," she tries to wipe her visible eye, tries to sound angry and put out that he's being lazy. They're both trying so hard to make this normal and it's never going to be normal again. "You can't go to sleep anymore. Not ever."_

"_Sorry, kiddo," he rasps, failing rapidly. It's a wonder his lungs can even force air up past his vocal chords any more, his body shredded almost beyond recognition by the twin power of two senior Captains and their fully released swords. "My eyelids feel so heavy…"_

Wrap yourself up in your righteous armor, little crusader, we're going to war.

Ukitake isn't sure where he read that. It's probably from a poem.

It's a moot point.

There's nothing more that could be said. He could go on trying to sound noble and magnanimous, tasting the lie and feeling all the slimier for it. He could even throw things even reverse and throw himself on Ichigo's mercy, pleading with the boy to forgive him and, by extension, all he embodies. Anything. He will take anything to set himself free of this stone weighing him down. He will grovel and he will shame himself to wear his Captain's coat with pride again.

But to do that is to shame anything and everything below and behind him. It dances on Kaien's grave and spits in Shunsui's eye. So he can't do it. He can't. As much as he might yearn for absolution, Ukitake will hate himself just a little bit more for the sake of all the things he's become so wrapped up in.

It's a spider's web, trapping him, strangling him. He can't escape it.

So he'll embrace it. He will politely excuse himself from Ichigo's company, not betraying even slightest bit of his anxieties or depression. He will throw himself back into his duties and go out drinking with Shunsui later that night. It won't solve anything, but nothing seems to solve the problems these days.

Dragging a trio of kind-hearted Arrancar away to the Twelfth Division isn't going to make Soul Society safer. It only bred resentment in a young man who proved he was more than willing to challenge the establishment for the sake of a friend…which was what landed him under house arrest with his own detail of twenty assassins in the first place.

(In fact, that's become something of a disturbing trend, thinking back to the Quincy boy's attack on the Captain of the Twelfth as soon as the threat of the Arrancar army had passed. He was still heavily sedated and strapped to a bed with special spirit power-leeching restraints in the Fourth Division, as far as Ukitake knew.)

Funding Kurotsuchi won't make the soldiers smarter. In fact, it only breeds disloyalty and a lack of cohesion, as officers of all ranks and stations mutter behind the mad Captain's back about is profound lack of anything approaching ethics. He breeds mistrust, contempt, and an outrage almost as potent as the one birthed by the three traitors. Only by virtue of his working in their labs and under the Commander-General's eye does he remain an ally of any sort.

Congratulating Zaraki won't make Soul Society stronger. It will only attract a purer breed of monster, the kind that makes the scarred warmonger look tame by comparison. Even Zaraki, ghastly as he is, is a man. He fights for the sake of fighting and leaves his vanquished opponents alive if he didn't deliver any fatal blows. He dotes on his daughter in his own way, never truly straying into the hopeless so long as she is there to humble and inspire him. But no one else sees that; they see an ogre and a path to tread, inspiring dumb, young, violent men to rise up with too much brawn and not enough mercy. All too easily can he see the Eleventh, a Squad of warriors, becoming the Squad of barbarians.

Burning the traitors in effigy won't make the soldiers more loyal. It will only let men like his teacher and superior, the Commander-General, cloak himself in a righteous fury and smug condescension when an officer ever dares to disagree with him again. The Cerberus specter of Aizen, Ichimaru, and Tousen will go further in keeping officers in line than any other piece of rhetoric. That fire will only fan even hotter flames, feelings of anger and betrayal and perhaps even a species of confused love. Ukitake very much doubts that Lieutenant Matsumoto's resignation from the Tenth Division one week after Gin Ichimaru's death was by any means a coincidence.

The thoughts swirling through his old bones are enough to nearly overwhelm him. He falters, knees weak and lungs straining. It's not an attack from his malady, but it might as well be the case. The disease destroys his body and his rank rots his soul. He's not sure how much longer he can live under this, eroding on so many fronts.

He's not sure how the Soul Society has lasted as long as it has, rotting corpse that it is. Once, a long time ago, he almost wished the Quincy people had been victorious.

He puts the thought from his mind. Doubts and guilt will serve nothing. He cannot apologize for his life or the lives of the brave souls who fought and died in the name of this system, flawed thought it may be. So resolved, he picks himself up some minutes later and walks on still-shaking but ultimately strong legs to his bedroom.

It won't be a fairy tale ending, but it will do.

The boy will follow in his father's footsteps, most likely. Even if he doesn't become a healer, helping others is hardwired into his DNA at this point. He will do something great and noble with his life, even if it will pale in comparison to all he could have done.

Friendships will be torn asunder with the erasure of memories, as it is unlikely many of them would have met in more than awkward, distant ways if not for the harrowing adventures brought on by spiritual awareness. The Quincy will continue to be alone in his bitterness and mistrust. The girl will never find her love reciprocated, too timid to say anything just as he will go back to being too defensive to even entertain the thought. The boy and his tall friend will remain close, of course, but their friendship will likely never reach the depth it attained after so much strife and reward.

They will be broken, piece by piece.

Ukitake understands the rationale. They know too much, have done too much. Ichigo's madcap rush to the world of the Hollows had nearly allowed Aizen to carry out his master stroke, effectively halving Soul Society's strength. The Quincy continues to hate and mistrust the Reapers, only an ally of short-lived necessity. The tall boy had returned with his Hollow powers stronger than ever. The girl was simply too powerful.

The members of Thirteen Court Guard Squads couldn't allow such liabilities to persist.

Ukitake supposed it was a sign of respect that the Commander-General hadn't proposed they be executed. The thought had likely crossed his mind, though.

Ukitake sighed, leaning back into the softness of his bed. It couldn't be helped. There was nothing more he could do for them, beyond hoping and praying that Ichigo and his friends never had occasion to touch the world of the deceased ever again. Looking into Ichigo's eyes—those naked, open, honest eyes—Ukitake decided it was really for the best.

That didn't keep him from weeping for them, for innocence lost.


End file.
